209, 122/80

I arose this morning, well rested and happy to see the sun in a blue sky. For those of us on the East Coast, this has been a very long, wet, cool summer. In the past, I would have walked outside for my copy of the Boston Globe but since I get nearly all my news online, we have downsized our subscription to the Sunday paper only.

So, I fire up the Dell, click on Google News (not ready to give my life over to BING yet) and immediately wish I had left well enough along and turned onSportsCenter.

Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the “President’s Surveillance Program” did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. But FBI agents told the authors that the “mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile.”

I am not sure which bothers me more, the fact that so few people knew about it, or that despite invading our privacy, the information gathered was of little use.

Figuring I might be a bit more encouraged by looking in the business section, I come across this gem. What the folks at GM don’t get is, touting what a great job you have done in such a short time would be fine, if you did it on your own nickel. However, I think even the kids who sell lemonade at their parent’s yard sales would be able to make hay with a plan to eliminate 30% of your workforce and 50% of your dealerships funded by a generous $40 billion in taxpayer capital. Where exactly is all the job creation and help to the US economy in all of this?

Company officials yesterday seized on the company’s emergence from 40 days in bankruptcy to advertise efforts to restart the failed automaker…The new GM will have only four core brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMAC. By the end of 2011, the company plans to operate 34 plants, down from 47 in 2008. Its U.S. employment is slated to shrink from about 91,000 to about 64,000 by the end of this year. The number of dealers will shrink from 6,000 to 3,600 by the end of the year as well.

Perhaps the sports section can stop that feeling of nausea growing in my stomach. Maybe there will be an inspirational piece on Lance Armstrong or Michael Phelps.

John G. Duesler Jr., President of the Valley Club had arranged for three day-camps to use the pool this summer. But when 65 black and Hispanic children from a city camp called Creative Steps Inc. showed up at the club on June 29, lifeguards and other club members were overwhelmed, he said. “It was just too many kids on top of each other,” Duesler told reporters, some of whom had camped out in vans in front of the club throughout the day. “Many of them couldn’t swim.”

In his first comments to reporters on the matter, Duesler said, “there is a lot of concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion . . . and the atmosphere of the club.”